Episode Report Card Jacob Clifton: A+ | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Destroy Everything You Touch Today
By Jacob Clifton | Season 1 | Episode 20 | Aired on 03.07.2011
Paige: "But-but-but it's just a group date! Please don't stop secretly being my non-girlfriend! It means nothing to me!"
Emily: "You're only as sick as your secrets, P-Flag. Good thing I'm supernaturally compassionate."
Paige: "I cannot see how I am the bad guy here."
Ella and Byron discuss how weird their kid-created family dinner is going to be. Ella points out the very fact that is central to this series, which is that half the reason Aria is the way she is, is because her parents keep making her carry their secrets around on her back. No wonder she has no concept of boundaries.
Byron: (Immediately goes into defense mode, but stays quiet.)
Ella: "To change the subject, how cute is this? Aria wants a secret of her own, sweet little darling thing, and she's dating some secret boy."
Byron: (Immediately goes into attack mode, in such a way as to horrifically question Ella's parenting.)
Ella: (Takes off her earrings; points out that Byron's not allowed to do or think anything he's thinking or doing.)
Byron: "I'm sticking to my hypocritical guns. As a veteran taker-advantage of young women, I have crucial insight into this romance and its dangers."
Ella: (Barfs.)
Aria hands her collection of non-incriminating trash over to Emily, who is nothing if not obliging, and they talk about how scary it would have been if somehow the sexting had not been entirely sexless and embarrassing, or if she'd called him by name. "Fresh manicures and tiny keyboards: A deadly combination," Aria says, because now she rules.
Before Aria can bore Emily even more than she already is, they overhear Caleb yelling at his mysterious interlocutor right there in the middle of the quad. The conversation is vague enough that it sounds like some girl yelling at him for dating Hanna also, and him yelling back for always calling him even though he is taking advantage of Hanna's hospitaliano. The best lines here: "First of all, I don't think she's who you say she is... Don't call her that!"
The ladies take this latest dropping of eaves straight to Hanna; she sticks her fingers in her ears and goes la-la-la so forcefully that it's a little intimidating. At one point she's like, "We bared our souls before we bared our other stuff; he told me about Flagstaff, I told him everything too." Spencer makes a fist, but Hanna's like, "Not everything, duh. Not how we blinded that girl or anything, just like about Fat Camp."